1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to mobile communication terminals and, more particularly, to a rotating slide-type mobile communication terminal in which a slider, having a liquid crystal display therein, rotatably slides on a main body and is thus opened in a lateral direction of the main body, thereby allowing a user to effectively use various multimedia service functions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, according to rapid developments in the information and communication technologies industry, mobile communication terminals, such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDA), have been expanded in function, for example, having not only functions of phones but also having functions of picture and moving image viewers, cameras, camcorders, digital diaries and electronic dictionaries.
Therefore, to output a larger amount of data at one time, scaling up of liquid crystal displays has been required, so that slide-type terminals which have liquid crystal displays larger than terminals of prior arts are gaining popularity.
A representative example of conventional slide-type communication terminals will be explained herein below.
FIG. 1 is an exploded perspective view showing the construction of a conventional slide-type mobile communication terminal.
As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional slide-type mobile communication terminal includes a main body 100 which has on a front surface thereof a keypad 111 to input various signals, such as letter and character data, and a microphone 112 to input audio signals. The conventional slide-type mobile communication terminal further includes a slider 200 which is coupled to the front surface of the main body 100 and is configured to slide in a direction parallel to the front surface of the main body 100. Both a liquid crystal display (not shown), which outputs a video signal, and a receiver (not shown), which outputs an audio signal, are provided on a front surface of the slider 200.
Therefore, a user is able to input signals using the keypad 111 after opening the front surface of the main body 100 such that the keypad 111 and the microphone 112 are exposed. In addition, in the above state, the user is able to perform telephonic communication with another person through the microphone 112 and a receiver (not shown).
The slider 200 has on a rear surface thereof a pair of guide rails 210, each of which guides a carrier 220 that is provided in each guide rail 210 of the slider 200. Coupling members 113 are provided on the main body 100 at predetermined positions corresponding to the carriers 220 placed in the guide rails 210, so that the coupling members 113 are coupled to the respective carriers 220 to form a structure such that the slider 200 slides relative to the main body 100 under the guidance of the guide rails 210 and the carriers 220.
However, in the conventional slide-type mobile communication terminal, the slider 200 has a structure in which it is linearly opened or closed, and the liquid crystal display is fixed in a longitudinal direction of the main body 100. Accordingly, it is somewhat inconvenient to use various multimedia services. In detail, even through software supports a wide-screen view, because the orientation of the liquid crystal display cannot be changed in a lateral direction of the main body 100, there is a structural disadvantage in that the user must rotate the entire terminal to view the liquid crystal display in a wide-screen fashion. Furthermore, the conventional slide-type mobile communication terminal is problematic in that, even if the user rotates the entire terminal, the orientation of the screen is not stably maintained.